


The Name Written On Your Bones

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [47]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Acceptance, Communication, Cute, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Happy Ending, Heartwarming, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Marriage, Necromancy, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Skeletons, Trans, Trans Male Character, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24860716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: “Papa. You said there’s places where...they wouldn’t call me by my name. So...thank you for calling me by my name. My real name.”***A loose-lipped father talks bones with his young son.
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [47]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The Name Written On Your Bones

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy a new _Second Starfall_ tale for all you fellow trans kids out there.
> 
>  **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** This tale is about [Galien Tarrou's](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Galien%20Tarrou*s*the%20Tulip-Farmer/works) dad, Loose Mouth, first briefly mentioned in ["The Incident With The Rabbits From The Moon."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22584295)
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

Gossip flourished in the Lowlands after the marriage of Loose Mouth Marchand and Margot Tarrou. Over their ale and wine, and out of earshot of the local clergy, folk insisted it was a bad, bad omen, that union. Even the nobles disapproved. Men of the sea, they admonished, could never be trusted—especially men who had tongues as free as Loose Mouth’s.

“He’s there to take her land and sell it to pay his debts,” admonished the Lowlands folk.

No one could fathom what a retired mariner wanted with the territory’s most prolific tulip-farmer, mostly because no one asked him directly. To talk to Loose meant to set oneself up for a six hour long story of his so-called ‘state secrets,’ all of which were profoundly incoherent and rather bloody. Had anyone at all listened to Loose anymore, they would have gotten the honest truth about the marriage.

Essentially: he liked that he had someone legally bound to hearing him out. 

He also thought tulips were pretty.

The world is built on such simple explanations.

***

In time, Margot had heard all his stories. The tulips heard them all, and the moon heard them all. Even the rude silver rabbits that nested among the crop every year grew bored with him. When he and Margot had a son, it excited Loose to know he had another captive audience, and one that looked a lot like him, too.

On rest-days Loose told little Galien about the skirmishes between the freshwater and saltwater merfolk of Milkpool.

And of the marauding birchwood trees in the True Witchwood far north.

And of the men and women in Gessifer, where the sexes, warlike, lived separately from each other all their lives.

“Turns out,” Loose would say, “all the nonsense in the world comes from those who hate folk that’re different than them. Sounds too easy, but it’s true. Doesn’t even matter what the difference is about. It’s not like that here, though, you hear me? Not at all. Anyone can be anything.”

As said: the world is built on such simple explanations.

Loose’s grisly tales, though long-winded, held truths within them. Far too many, if you asked him. He wanted Galien to bloom into a young man liberated from that violence. He wanted Galien to be grateful for the tulips and for his mother and for the quiet spirits that lived in the breeze; that was the truest form of love he could imagine.

The boy drank it all in.

***

“Talk to your son,” Margot said one morning. “You prattled on about something, Loose, and you need to walk it back.”

Loose Mouth did as he was told. He found the boy, who was at that point ten years old, behind the farmhouse. Galien was picking listlessly at an owl pellet in his lap.

“Well,” said Galien, “I’m different, aren’t I?”

At his son’s birth, Loose had mistaken Galien for a girl. He had quickly realized, by the time the boy was five, that he’d actually produced a son. It happened all the time.

“Now you can’t go blaming yourself for my mistake,” Loose said. “You’re just you. If something was well and truly wrong, I’d have told you…”

“...there are places outside of here where they’d put me in a war, or I’d have to put myself in a war, or hid away.” A vole’s jaw skittered across the dirt. “You said. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like there’s a storm in my head.”

“But you’re safe here, my boy. Why think about…”

“You said.”

For once, Loose closed his mouth. His teeth clacked together. He stared for a while at the vole jaw, then picked it up.

“Here’s a story you’ll actually like, understand? I had a friend once—a magician, but they were a good one. They were always trying to stir up the dead.”

“That sounds...scary,” said Galien, who, unlike other little boys, had a sensible character.

“Well, not _people_ dead, not even talking animal dead, but rodents, things small-like. They thought it would help us understand what happens when we pass. But that’s just a side-story.” Loose sat down in the dust. “They told me about how your bones are filled with stuffing that’s just sort-of pure you. As long as you know your own bones, you’re protected to the end of time, because no one can take that away from you.”

Galien watched him steadily.

“Soon as they put a mouse back together and worked some spirits, there was the mouse again. The bones remembered. There are certain things you can’t lose, and yourself is one of ‘em,” Loose explained. He held out the jawbone. “Look: this vole’s gone through the gut of some awful bird and she’s still here. My magician friend could find all her parts and put life in her and she’d scurry off into the tulips again.”

It seemed so straightforward to Loose Mouth, the concept he wanted to impart: _I can’t say there aren’t parts of the world that’re terrible. But even if you leave this little farm, if you know what’s in your skull and your femurs and all that, Galien, you’re fine._ The world, as mentioned, is built on such simple explanations. Yet he couldn’t find the foundation, much less the bricks, the mortar.

Nonetheless Galien smiled up at him. Thank goodness.

“Papa. You said there’s places where...they wouldn’t call me by my name. So...thank you for calling me by my name. My real name.” 

“It’s the one written in your bones, isn’t it?” Loose said, handing the jawbone back to him.

“It is.”

“Attaboy.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** Whatever JK Rowling says, you're valid.
> 
> This is one of those stories that's been percolating forever (like, before Galien had a name forever) but I only just now got around to doing. I've come up with a schedule that allows me to write a little faster, but it's still not as fast as I want. Still, expect quicker stories now.
> 
> With regards to SecStar, I told myself I'd try to write positive relationships for queer folks first before the negative ones. That doesn't mean the folks in the relationships are perfect, however, and it's a fun challenge to think of ways a parent can mess up in a forgivable way, without traumatizing or abusing their kiddo. We're all human.
> 
> I hope the "[relative]-[relative] relationship" tag means the standard thing and not, like, incest, because hoo boy a lot of people are going to be disappointed if it does.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨


End file.
